Number 35 liked frolicking with female staffers in the pool, while number 36 often chose to walk around naked in front of his family. Later on, number 39 was a skinflint poser, while number 44 still likes to secretly smoke cigarettes behind his wife's back.

The numbered titles refer to recent US presidents, whose private behavioural peculiarities have just been served up to the public in a book called In the Presidents Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect.

Author Ronald Kessler conducted interviews with over 100 current and former loose-tongued Secret Service agents, many of whom have a serious axe to grind about their former White House charges and their families.

The earliest behind-the-scenes gossip in the book concerns John F Kennedy. According to agents, the service quickly became aware of Kennedy's notorious womanising ways.

It's claimed that JFK had several lovers within the White House, including his wife Jackie's own press secretary. He nicknamed two other assistants Fiddle and Fanny, and they reportedly had threesomes together.

One of Kennedy's agents also confirms that Kennedy had sex with Marilyn Monroe at New York hotels and in a loft above the Justice Department office of his brother Bobby, the then US Attorney General.

JFK's minders kept radio contact with Jackie's people to facilitate the president's philandering schedule. One afternoon Kennedy was enjoying himself with young women in the White House pool when word came in that the First Lady would be back in 10 minutes.

Kennedy charged out of the pool holding a Bloody Mary in his hands.

He coolly handed it to an agent, and said: "Enjoy it, it's quite good."

Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B Johnson, was, according to the book, uncouth, nasty, and often drunk. It alleges that LBJ had affairs with several young secretaries, and one night was caught having sex with one of them on a sofa in the Oval Office by his wife, Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson.

The president was furious with his agents for not warning him, and soon after installed a buzzer system so that they could alert him when his wife was approaching the office.

Agents also reveal that LBJ wore a girdle, and that he liked to walk around naked in front of his wife, daughters, and female secretaries, earning him the nickname Bull Nuts.

One agent goes even further and says that LBJ was so well endowed that the bulls at his ranch would hang their heads in shame.

More seriously, the book claims that the president was often drunk on the job, keeping bottles of whiskey in his car at his private ranch.

His drinking would fuel nasty outbursts of rage, exploding at cooks on Air Force One over the quality of the beef served. If Johnson weren't president, one agent says, he'd be in an insane asylum.

It probably won't come as a great surprise to learn that agents found the Nixons to be the strangest of them all. Nixon himself came across as emotionless and calculating and had no relationship with his wife Pat, who the books claims was a secret alcoholic. In fact, one agent recalls how after hearing suspicious rustling in the bushes outside the family home in California, he discovered Pat Nixon crawling on her hands and knees, trying to find the house.

Jimmy Carter was as unpopular with the Secret Service as he was with the electorate in the latter stage of his presidency. Carter rarely spoke to his agents, and even charged them to eat the food left over after official White House engagements.

To the agents, Carter was a phoney who always played up to the camera. His former minders say that he was always sure to carry his own bags while reporters were around, but then make the service haul them around the rest of the time.

If the agents disliked Carter, they adored the man who trounced him in the 1980 election: Ronald Reagan. The Gipper treated them with respect and good humour, and they grew even closer after the failed assassination attempt on his life in 1981.

But agents disliked his wife Nancy Reagan intensely, characterising her as very cold. She even made their own children go through her if they wanted to visit the president in the Oval Office. One minder also recounts how Nancy used to lambast her staff if her friends got their copies of Vogue and Mademoiselle before the White House did.

Barbara Bush, on the other hand, was popular with agents. And why wouldn't she be, when apparently she used to offer to do the laundry for the protectors stationed at the Bush home in Kennebunkport, Maine?

Agents were also on hand to witness the defining moment of the marriage, and presidency, of Bill Clinton.

The day after Bill confessed to his affair with Monica Lewinsky on August 17, 1998, the couple flew to Martha's Vineyard. One agent named Albrecht got a frosty call from Hillary, demanding to know where Bill was.

"He's just arrived at a Starbucks in town ma'am," the agent replied.

He was then ordered to tell the president to get home now.. "and I mean right now!"

He was being punished, the agent opines. It was like he was grounded.

When it came to the Bushes, the greatest concern for the agents -- apart from personal security post 9/11 -- were the Terrible Twins, Jenna and Barbara, nicknamed Jenna and Tonic by the American press for their bouts of underage drinking.

So far, the Obamas don't seem to have ticked off any of their agents. By all accounts, the new First Couple treat their Secret Service protectors with respect and have twice asked them to dinner. That said, the indiscreet agents may have gotten Obama in trouble with his wife -- they state in the book that the president is, in fact, still sneaking cigarettes.

In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect; Ronald Kessler (Crown, £15.78)

- Declin Cashin

Irish Independent